Whether for business purposes or involving your personal data, you may need to enter a Social Security Number (SSN) into one or multiple cells on an Excel spreadsheet. However, Excel can cut off the leading zeros on SSNs that contain them, and otherwise improperly format SSNs, thus disrupting the integrity of the information. Here is how to change the default setting on Excel to accept SSNs in their complete and proper format.

Steps

1

Click on the column in which you are entering one or more SSNs. Make sure to select the column letter (at the very top) to highlight the entire section, in which you want to apply this special formatting.